Economie value of LFC substitution by charge control for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

There are lots of global warming countermeasures. In the power sector, nuclear power plants play an important role because they do not produce CO ₂ emissions during production of electricity. However, if the generation share of nuclear is too high at nighttime, it becomes difficult to keep enough capacity of Load Frequency Control (LFC) because nuclear power plants do not change the output (i.e., without load following operation) in Japan. On the other hand, in the transport sector, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) is being developed as an environmentally friendly vehicle. The electric energy of PHEV is charged mainly during nighttime when the electricity price is low. Therefore, we have proposed a charging power control of PHEVs to compensate LFC capacity in nighttime. In this study, we evaluated the economic value of charging power control by using an optimal generation planning model, and obtained the following results. Charging power control is effective in reduction of CO₂ emissions and enhancement of economic efficiency of power system. Particularly, even in the low market share of PHEVs, the charge control has a high economic value because it substitutes nuclear power plant, base-load provider with low fuel cost, for LNG-CC, LEC provider with high fuel cost.